The Briar and the Rose
by Tammany Tiger
Summary: This is character study, playing faintly off existing canon and some hints and fragments in the current Season Three trailer. Longish. Pensive. Sherlock has a very hard time explaining Holmes family dynamics to a John who's not feeling all that sympathetic after the two-year hiaitus. John sulks, and Sherlock wallows around in things that aren't his division.


**More character study. This one's Sherlock and Mycroft, with John as a useful querant. Post return, trying to play off some things that seem to be hinted at in the latest promo trailer.**

**The Briar and the Rose**

.

"I looked at that, when you were…gone," John said, leaning in the door of Sherlock's room, staring across the space to the photo Sherlock had just removed from a cardboard box and returned to his dresser. "You and Mycroft, yeah?"

"Yes," Sherlock said.

"Yeah, I thought so. I remember packing it up before I moved out. I didn't want Mycroft to think I'd just left your things out to fade and get eaten by silverfish. Wanted him to know I'd taken care of them properly." His voice is grim and edged with cynicism. "Wanted to make sure he knew that I did right by you, even if _he_ hadn't. Waste of time, that—wasn't it? Spiting the one person you really could trust, in the end."

"Not the only one, John." Sherlock drew out old case files, reference books. John had packed everything that had been left scattered around the room carefully, leaving nothing out. If Sherlock had been there he'd have told John to throw most of it away. But, then, that was the problem, after all. Sherlock had not been there. "There were five of you I could trust, by my count. You just weren't all able to serve at the same time, or in the same way."

John's eyes were dark with old pain and new anger. Sherlock supposed he should be grateful he was there at all, standing in the doorway, arms crossed, face grim—but still there. "Yeah. Ok. Whatever."

"Not 'whatever.' Three of you were removed from play by Moriarty's knowledge of you. That's not a comment on your lack of reliability, or my lack of respect for you. It's simply the logic of the game. Mycroft and Molly: they were off Moriarty's radar. They could act without his awareness. You, and Mrs. Hudson, and DI Lestrade could not. Don't get strategy confused with sentiment, John. It only leads to false conclusions."

John nodded. "Yeah. I get it."

Only Sherlock was not convinced John did.

It was the quiet aftermath of Sherlock's return… at least, quiet in comparison with the frantic scramble to save London that had brought Sherlock back "from the dead." Emotionally, though, things were still a bit…

A bit not good. No. A lot not good. Actually, they were pretty bad. Or Sherlock thought they were pretty bad. He wasn't really any better at emotions than he'd ever been, and he had a hard time deciding if the turmoil among his former friends would eventually fade with time, or if this was what reality was going to look like from here on.

If it was what reality was going to look like, it was going to be a very unpleasant life from here on in.

John shoved off from the door frame and paced quietly to the far side of Sherlock's room, ignoring his friend rummaging through the boxes. He went to stand in front of the dresser. His back was straight, but his shoulders were hunched from the tension of crossed arms. "I looked at it on and off for days," he said. "All I could see was that priggy, piggy schoolboy scowling at you. You looked so innocent."

"Look more closely," Sherlock said, dryly.

"What—I see, but I don't observe?"

"Perhaps."

John stared at the picture. "Nope. Don't see it. Mycroft's what, thirteen?"

"Yes. It was taken the day before he went off to boarding school for the first time. End of holiday photo for Mummy."

"Looks like Dudley Dursley. All he needs is a pig's tail."

"Mycroft wasn't a particularly pretty young boy."

"You looked like a choirboy."

"Yes. I knew it, too," Sherlock said, calmly. "Do look at my feet."

"Yeah, kind of arty pose. Your mother's choice?"

"No. Me preparing to kick Mycroft in the shin and run. One foot back. It looked quite innocent, didn't it?"

"Yeah. You were a sweet-looking kid. Mycroft was jealous?"

"Probably, sometimes. Protective more of the time. Even then he was a terrible realist. He wouldn't have permitted himself much sentiment about the relative injustice of it all. Just concerned about the dangers that I'd face. And I think in his own way he thought my looks entitled me to all the admiration and special treatment they attracted… he was still young enough to accept that 'beauty is truth, truth beauty.' The ugly stepsister always deserves to spit out toads, not gold."

John grumbled under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing," John said. He picked up the photo. "All right, I can tell you think I'm being stupid. What am I missing when I look at this? There's a reason it's the only personal picture you keep, isn't it? What don't I see?"

Sherlock sighed. "John, this isn't my… what's Lestrade's phrase? Oh, right. This isn't my division. I don't do this well. Relationships and sentiment and all that. Not my area at all."

"I want to understand," John said, frustration simmering in every word. "Sherlock, that man lied to us for two years. _Two years._ And for years before that. I never could quite figure out if the two of you really cared about each other, what with one thing and another, and the secret agent stuff, and… I don't understand what…why… Even knowing it was all a trick to trap Moriarty, I don't think I understand…where Mycroft fits."

"Mycroft is my brother," Sherlock said. "That's really the sum of it, John. He's my big brother." He considered, then said, "I think what you are really trying to ask is where you fit. My relationship with Mycroft has changed something, hasn't it?"

John huffed, and walked away from the dresser, back to the doorway. "No. It's Mycroft. He didn't fit in with the rest of your life. Me, Lestrade, yes. Mycroft? He's still…Mycroft. Cold, smug, interfering, sanctimonious, controlling…"

"Yes, yes, John. Mycroft. He really has angered you, hasn't he?"

"He used to anger you."

"And he will again, regularly. And vice versa. He is not an easy man to endure as an older brother. But—I am informed by an expert that I'm not an easy man to endure as a younger brother. So there you are."

"What expert?"

"Mycroft, of course. Who knows better than he does?"

John snorted and stomped out to the kitchen, calling back, "Want some tea?"

"Tea would be fine," Sherlock called back. He slipped his smartphone from his pocket and searched for images of Dudley Dursley, then frowned. He could see the resemblance.

"He did look quite a lot like Dudley, didn't he?" he said, when John came back in.

"Like I said, all he needs is the pig's tail." John handed down a mug of tea fixed the way Sherlock liked it. Then he wandered back to the dresser, picking up the photo again in his free hand. "What am I missing, Sherlock? Is this another case of me seeing, but not observing?"

Sherlock sighed, unwound himself from the floor in a smooth flex of thighs and calves, and walked over to join John. "Some, perhaps. Details you don't notice. I suspect most of all you simply lack context." He reached over John's shoulder and touched the picture. "His hair—all rucked up. I'd messed it up just before the photographer took the picture. That's a detail you see, but fail to observe, or ask about. But there are things there you couldn't see, either. There's the scowl… I'd just told him he should stay home with us, because no one at his new school would want to be friends with a fat, ugly know-it-all. That he was better off with us, because we _had_ to love him."

"Honest to a fault even then?"

"Actually, in that case it wasn't honesty. I had no idea what school would be like, and was very afraid Mycroft would like it much better than staying at home with me. It was cruelty, and quite intentional."

"This isn't explaining why you keep this picture—or why Mycroft was the one person more important than anyone when you made your plan. He and Molly. Even Molly makes more sense…"

"John, try this: just tell me what you see. No guesses, no interpretations. Don't worry about context, or what you don't know. Tell me precisely what you see."

John huffed. "Is this another of your games to make us ordinary blokes look daft?"

"No, John. You are not ordinary, and this isn't a game. You're too upset about this for it to be a game. Look, and tell me what you see."

John sighed, and looked down, irritated. "I see two boys."

"Lame, John. That's entirely lame. Try again."

"All right. Two boys. One's about thirteen, and looks like Dudley Dursley. The other one is six, and looks like he ought to be playing the littlest angel in the church Christmas panto."

"A role I played several years running, until the youth leader insisted that no one as wicked as I was should be given the role, no matter how I looked. She was of the opinion I was tarnishing the reputation of angels throughout the parish. Mycroft was chosen to play Joseph for ten years straight, from the time he was eight until he was eighteen. He was very good at leading the donkey, and very gentle with Mary and the baby, even when the baby was just a plastic doll. A good, nice boy. Oh, except for the year Annabelle Torson was cast as Mary. She called me a little weasel and Mycroft stuffed yoghurt down her knickers just before the panto started. She was squishy the whole time."

"I don't really see you as a churchy family."

"We were County. 'To the manor born.' You don't skip out on the C of E. At least, we didn't. Not thirty years ago. Now, the picture, John. Tell me more. Look at those boys like a doctor. Like a detective. What do you see?"

John pondered. "Like a doctor?"

"It would be a good start."

"All right. Mycroft's thirteen. Appears to be coming into his height early?"

"Quite. Another reason he was chosen for Joseph so often."

"Hmmm. Okay. I can see he's got the Holmes height, and the long neck—or I can see it if I look past the chins."

"I think he'd have been a comfort eater regardless, but we're both as responsive to flavors and scents as we are to visual input. I overload. Mycroft…doesn't. Perhaps one of many reasons he was never tempted to try drugs. His pleasures are more accessible. And his body manages energy differently. What else can you see?"

"I don't know. He's spotty. But then, he's thirteen."

"Spotty, yes. And?"

"Freckled."

"And?"

"Um… a ginger?"

"At that age 'ginger' was too bland a term for Mycroft's hair. The other boys used to say he ought to substitute for a danger cone on the road-tall, round, and day-glow orange. Anything more? Again, you're a doctor. Look."

"Skinned knees?"

"Always. Clumsy at that age. Two left feet. What else can you tell me? What else can you deduce from this picture of a thirteen-year-old boy? What does he know? What is he experiencing?"

"Um… "

"Oh, for God's sake, John. He's tall, spotty, clumsy, just growing into his body. What else is happening?"

"Ah. Puberty."

"His voice didn't stay in one register for five minutes at a time. And so… tell me what else he's learning about himself?"

"I don't know. That girls are…. Oh."

"Yes, 'oh.' He was a tall, clumsy, spotty know-it-all genius with a voice that wouldn't stay in one octave. The kind of boy people pick to play Joseph in the Christmas pageant because he was kind to animals, little girls, and babies…and who could be counted on to show up even when he was eighteen and long past the age of pageants. And he had just started to realize he was gay." Sherlock turned away, then, adding, "I'd just begun to realize he was, too. A bit precocious, but not very. And good at deduction. Very good. What I was not good at was having any idea what it meant, beyond something dirty and disgusting and funny the other boys sniggered about in the lav. I assure you, I'm far more tactful now than I was when I was six."

Sherlock could actually feel John wince in reluctant sympathy. "Ouch." He sighed. "Anything else I'm supposed to be seeing?"

"You might be able to determine he's shy…not just adolescent shy, but naturally bashful. It's there in his stance, in his attitude toward the camera. But I grant you, it's not obvious. Now—tell me about his brother."

"Six. You've got the lighter bone structure….almost…"

"Dainty. Yes. And as you commented, suited to angel-roles in the panto."

"Um…treble voice?"

"Oh, yes. I could sing _Ave Maria_ so the mothers all wept… or they would have if I'd been able to refrain from using the dirty lyrics Mycroft and I made up behind the stables one year."

"Still, you've got skinned knees, too. Clumsy?"

"Not then. Not for several more years, and never as badly as Mycroft. Mainly just unable to sit still and stay out of trouble. As I recall that set of scabs was the result of stealing Mycroft's bike—far too big for me—and trying to ride it down the Long Hill at the edge of the village. My knees came out better than Mycroft's bike."

"You're going to tell me he's the one who carried you home five miles barefoot with you on his back, like St. Christopher," John said, sourly.

"No. Hauled me two miles by my wrist whilst calling me a number of vile names. But it was his pocket handkerchief tied around my knee. And he brought me home instead of his bike, which I do think even now was a noble sacrifice."

John sighed. "All right, you've done a superb job of demonstrating that your brother was, perhaps, deserving of sympathy. Or at least of sentiment." His voice snapped on the final hated word, clearly intending to rub it in. "So—this is the picture that tells you Mycroft was great to you?"

"Good God, no. Two seconds after the shutter snapped, I kicked him and he hit me and called me an obnoxious little twat. And I called him a poncy freak ran off to the nursery. And he stole my favorite model ship. And I buried his retainer in the compost heap behind the stable, then washed it off rather badly and gave it back that way…on purpose. And…. Well. You see."

John shook his head, glancing from the picture to Sherlock and back. "No. I really don't see. What are you telling me? Why this picture?"

"Because this is the picture that always reminds me we're _brothers._ When I see this picture I know he was there to hold me on a pillow when Mummy brought me home from the hospital. They say he almost fainted he was trying so hard not to breath, lest he hurt me somehow. We'd had a little sister before me, but she died when she was only four-months-old—crib death. He was afraid I'd die, too—and that it might have been his fault she'd died."

"Why?"

"Because he was six, and Mycroft. And because he'd apparently carried her from her crib to his bed once, and everyone had panicked, and told him how easy it was to hurt the baby…and he didn't know. And you still don't understand. I look and I see the two of us screaming at each other after Father left, with him blaming me for telling Mummy about the affair. He'd deduced it when he was ten, and had been keeping it secret for years, terrified if he told anyone the family would fall apart. Which it did, of course. But it didn't make it better for either of us when I blabbed. He threw up, after. And wouldn't talk to me for months. I mean really—he wouldn't talk to me at all. He's stubborn. Look, it's not just about this picture. I keep this picture because when I look at it, I remember everything. It's…" He sighed, then, and said, softly, "In my mind palace. In the wing that's all about me and Mycroft. This is the picture that keys me in. This is me. And Mycroft. It's about being brothers. It's one picture with thirty-seven years history tied to it. More—it's Mycroft, and my sister who died, and Mummy and Daddy when Mycroft was born, and… He's my _brother,_ John. He's my big brother. And he'd die to take care of me, and then yell at me for the rest of my life for getting in trouble in the first place. He's the one person who can win against me at blindfold Scrabble. He is the only person I know who's not Moriarty or Irene Adler who knows what it is to think so fast you've solved the problem before the people around you have managed to state what the problem is… He's the only sane version of me I know, including me." He actually tugged his own hair, he was so frustrated. "Don't you have any of that with Harry?"

"Not so I'd trust her before I'd trust you. Not so that I'd lie to you, and let you think I was dead, but tell her the truth."

"Because you couldn't. But with Mycroft and me… I'm the dysfunctional one, John. I'm Harry. You're Mycroft. Of course I can trust him, just like I can trust you. I had him as a brother. Harry had you. We had people to trust. You and Mycroft are the ones who've had to do it all alone."

John wasn't really any happier. He stomped out and started the electric kettle again, shouting back, "Yeah. I can just see Harry coming to me to help me fake her death."

"Well, you are a doctor. You'd be useful for that, if she needed to do it."

"That is _so_ not the point, Sherlock."

"If Harry needed to die, because someone like Moriarty wanted to destroy her, would you help?"

John's silence was the silence of a man who has no intention of conceding a point has been won.

Sherlock followed John out of the bedroom, but drifted to the front window, looking out over the street. "I'm sorry it hurts you, John," he called to his friend, ignoring the banging and crashing as John tidied a space that was no longer his own.

"It doesn't hurt me,"John shouted back, angrily.

"I told you. Moriarty cut you and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade out of the game. All there was to do was keep you safe, and out of play. Nothing else would have worked."

"And even if it had, you'd have gone to Mycroft. And the two of you would have done it on your own."

"It was Moriarty. It was international conspiracies. That's Mycroft's division."

"Not yours, though. Or it wasn't. Once."

Sherlock shrugged, and picked up his violin. He pulled the bow absently across the strings, then said, "I'd say I didn't choose my enemy. But I did. I just didn't know until it was too late that I was also choosing my ally. John, if I cut myself, I'd come to you. To fight Moriarty, there was only Mycroft. And…when Mycroft had to fight Moriarty, his only possible ally was me. Between us…"

"Between you, you ended up lying to the people closest to you, and going into exile for two years. While that sonofabitch sat in the Diogenes Club and drank single malt and lied to us all."

"We won."

"At what price?"

"The only price we could find."

"We."

"Yes. We."

"You called Moriarty a spider once. What's Mycroft, then?"

"A big fat garden spider. A green one, I think."

"What's the difference?"

"You tell me."

John snarled and clattered around in the kitchen and refused to come out.

"John?"

"Shut up, Sherlock. I'm pissed."

"I think we worked that out some time back."

"Good. At least there's no question about it."

"None. Now shut it."

Sherlock fiddled while John burned.

At last John came out of the kitchen and leaned against the door into the parlor.

"Yeah. OK. I know the difference. Moriarty kidnapped me and tried to use me to destroy you. Mycroft kidnapped me and tried to use me to save you. And it's going to be difference like that right down the line. But I'm still angry with him. And you're right. It still hurts."

"I know. I just can't change it. There was no other answer."

"And no other ally."

"No."

"The Holmes brothers."

"Yes."

John sighed, and closed his eyes, and said, "I have to admit, I think the two of you working together must be…. Something to see."

Sherlock shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I can't see it."

"Maybe someday I will," John said, softly.

"Maybe," Sherlock said, then smiled, hesitantly. "I'd like that."

"You would?"

"Yes." The smile firmed. "It would be nice to share my friend with my brother…and my brother with my friend."

John nodded, and said, as softly, "Give Mary a chance, too? For the same reason?"

Sherlock grimaced. "It's hardly the same thing."

"No. It's not. But it really is."

"It's not."

"Is."

"Not."

John laughed, then, for the first time in the afternoon, and smacked Sherlock with the damp tea towel before darting away. Sherlock squalled, and put the violin down carefully, and gave chase, and the subject was finished for the day.

But that night Sherlock set the picture back on the dresser, carefully, and touched the face of a spotty, fat, ginger-haired boy, traced the curls of a boy so sweet he looked angelic, even as his foot cocked for a fast kick, and smiled. Because friends were friends, and he hoped it would always be so—but brothers are forever, and even death can't change it.

.

**This is not Holmecest. It is, however, about two brothers who are almost formed by each other, each shaped to the other's turning. The title is of a song by Tom Waits that's often used as a sort of sad love-song ballad. I find it just as well suited, though, and maybe better suited, to Mycroft and Sherlock's sib relationship: two deeply intertwined, thorny, spiny men who still produce gorgeous blossoms—and if you try to pry them apart, be prepared to be shot through the heart and left for dead. There's a lovely version of the song by the Cottars on Youtube, if you want to listen.**

**.**

**The Briar and the Rose**

**Tom Waits: Lyrics and music.**

I fell asleep down by the stream**  
**And there I had the strangest dream**  
**And down by Brennan's Glenn there grows**  
**A briar and a rose

There's a tree in the forest**  
**But I don't know where**  
**I built a nest out of your hair**  
**And climbing up into the air**  
**A briar and a rose

I don't know how long it has been**  
**But I was born in Brennan's Glenn**  
**And near the end of spring there grows**  
**A briar and a rose

P icked the rose one early morn**  
**I pricked my finger on a thorn**  
**It had grown so high**  
**It's winding wove the briar around the rose

I tried to tear them both apart**  
**I felt a bullet in my heart**  
**And all dressed up in springs and clothes**  
**The briar and the rose

And when I'm buried in my grave**  
**Tell me so I will know**  
**Your tears will fall**  
**To make love grow**  
**The briar and the rose


End file.
